A number of questions are regularly posed to identify unhealthy attitudes to eating. For example, do you find yourself turning to food when you want to celebrate something or need some comfort, perhaps by watching TV chef Lorraine Pascale concoct a creamy lasagne?

Or do you ever indulge in binge-viewing, switching from Rachel Khoo's Parisian kitchen to the Great British Bake Off, before catching up on the latest final of MasterChef? Typical answers suggest that the British have a problem.

While many Britons exist on poor diets and others battle with eating disorders, the nation as a whole has developed an obsession with food shows, celebrity chefs and fantasy menus.

News last week that ITV1 is finally to step into the heat of the kitchen with a primetime cookery show called Food Glorious Food, courtesy of Simon Cowell, has confirmed that there is no surer bet in television than a format about food.

There is also a big appetite for seeing domestic cooks pit themselves against the experts. While amateur chefs' sorbets often melt and their souffles sink, the ratings keep on growing.

"Fashions in television have come and gone, but food has really stuck around," said Jay Rayner, the Observer's restaurant critic, who appears on MasterChef. "It is probably because it is the easiest to do. We only move house once every few years, after all, and it takes ages to do up your garden, but all of us can spare a few hours to screw up baking a cake."

The new series of BBC2's Great British Bake Off demonstrates that audiences are lapping it up. Nearly a million extra viewers watched the second episode last week, with a peak audience of 4.7 million. Coupled with the BBC's MasterChef, hosted by Gregg Wallace and John Torode, they make formidable competition for other channels.

"ITV has not done a lot of food television outside daytime," said Rayner, "And their viewership is quite separate to the BBC's, so there is no real danger that their audience is already saturated with cookery."

Food Glorious Food is expected to star Loyd Grossman, who was the first presenter of MasterChef, and it promises to scour the country in search of the best family recipe. The winning dish will be sold in Marks & Spencer and there is a £20,000 prize for the cook.

Grossman will be joined by food writer Tom Parker Bowles, Prince Charles's stepson, and filming starts in Devon next month.

Cowell, who claims a love of home-cooked food has billed it as not "a show for snobs".

Those working on Food Glorious Food say there will be an emphasis on the stories behind the recipes. Winning dishes will become the property of the show and there may be a voting component.

So is our national preoccupation with food becoming fetishistic rather than enthusiastic? No, says Rayner. "The idea that all this food is somehow subversive is difficult, I think," he said. "These shows are entertainment before anything else. Nobody is making programmes about the things people really cook, because that would be boring. But on the other hand, you can't get away with fakery. It has to be someone who really knows food or the viewer can sense it. This is why Sophie Dahl's show failed and Rachel Khoo's worked."

While chefs and TV cooks have passionate followings, it was the addition of a game show element that brought cookery into primetime entertainment.

MasterChef began on Sunday afternoons in 1990 with Grossman. It ran for 10 years before Grossman left, leaving Gary Rhodes holding the oven gloves.

In 2005, the series was revamped by the BBC, with grocer Wallace and chef Torode. Riding high in the ratings, it returned to BBC1 three years ago.

In the time since Grossman has been away from food programming the British concern with food has transformed the television schedules, the publishing industry and street food too.

Music festivals have jumped on the trend and the best now boast gourmet snack stands. Next month Jamie Oliver and the Blur bassist Alex James, who also makes cheese, will be hosting their own food festival, the Big Feastival, at James's farm in Oxfordshire to raise funds for the chef's charitable foundation. Ticket-holders are being offered cook-offs and the chance to try the barbecue steakhouse Barbecoa, an Indian twist on traditional British meat at the Brindian Roast Bar, and homemade pies from Piglets Pantry, while the Van mobile restaurant will serve Byron's burgers.

In October the Bowes Museum, near Durham, is to stage an exhibition examining the use of food imagery in culture. Feast Your Eyes will tackle the representation of food over five centuries.

"We know food is the most basic of our needs, but what we are looking at in our exhibition is how it can be used to tell a story or to get across a message," said Jane Whittaker, principal keeper at the museum and one of the curators.

"You can't always take images of food at face value. Food is used as symbolism and to pass on a certain message." Just as elaborate ingredients are used today to imply sophistication, the inclusion of certain fruits in a Dutch still-life study from the 17th or 18th century suggested the transience of life.

"We have included the Italian Giuseppe Arcimboldo's fantastical food portraits too," said Whittaker. "It was part of a 16th-century celebration of the abundance of food and the discovery of new ingredients."

One of the show's exhibits will involve recreating a Victorian supper party to celebrate a royal visit and will feature a sugar sculpture to rival anything that Heston Blumenthal might conceive. Dreams of excess are clearly not new, but Rayner believes our fascination with food is proving mainly beneficial.

"There is a theory we are the only food culture in Europe that is improving, while all the others decline, but then we did start off from quite a low base," he said. "You can still starve in parts of Britain for want of a good meal and there has been no great moral victory, but we do have the luxury of taking a greater interest now."